Guest Post By Steven Tolman, Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Higher Education Administration, Georgia Southern University
As a college professor, I have had the privilege of teaching undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students. Through these experiences, I have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. I would like to tell you that I was an exemplary freshman in college. To the contrary, I was on academic probation and my advisor encouraged me to consider career paths that did not require a college degree. Like many freshmen, my failures were not due to a lack of academic ability, but rather to my inability to navigate the transition from high school to college. Based on my own experiences and those of my students, here are my suggestions for how to avoid the common mistakes of freshmen.